Observation Of Goldfish Behavior In The Classroom

Overall, I think that this lesson was very effective. It gave the students a chance to handle materials and do hands-on activities as a group. They had various opportunities to observe and make predictions about goldfish behavior. Also, since their original classroom goldfish died, they were able to learn ways to take care of the new goldfish properly, and understand why their other goldfish might have died. While there were many effective parts of this lesson, there were still some ways that it was not effective, such as noise levels and group sizes. Another factor of this lesson that was effected, was the materials. The original goldfish died on the Friday before teaching this lesson. Therefore in order to still have a meaningful lesson for

Almost all of the class was able to reach each of the three objectives. This lesson was in the form of two observation centers. We started on the rug to have a discussion about prior knowledge and to review our discussion about the structure of goldfish in the previous week. They seemed to really retain the information, as they were able to recall each part of the goldfish and its purpose. The student’s also had a strong understanding of basic needs going into this lesson. After relating a goldfish’s basic needs to our own human basic needs, the students were able to develop a connection to the lesson on caring for goldfish. This lesson required a lot of planning and materials, such as two aquariums, six goldfish, elodea, fish food, conditioned water, basins, cups, paper towels, etc. I needed to make sure there was enough for each group. The two groups were separated by a small bookshelf, which was not effective in blocking noise, but the only reasonable classroom arraignment for this lesson. In addition to having all of the materials for this lesson, I also needed to find a way to make sure that each student had a chance to actually “take care” of the basic needs of the goldfish. To do this, I created job assignment cards. The job assignment cards were color coordinated and had a very brief description of the job for the developing readers in the class. If students could not read at all, then I simply had to tell them that if their card had red writing than they were a “feeder,” if it had light blue writing than they were a “planter,” if it had dark blue writing with some purple words than they were a “water adder,” and if it had dark blue words with a green word than they were a water replacer. In each group of 11, (actually one group of 10 because of an absent student), the roles were divided so there would be 3 feeders, 4 water changers, and 4 planters (because of material availability). I think